Manufacturing industry is getting competitive by every single day and in order to stay relevant in the business, it has become imperative for companies to practice innovation and adapt new technologies to increase productivity. For a long time manufacturing ecosystem felt the need of integrated tools to increase the operational efficiency, decrease costs and most importantly meet the customer expectations.
Well, Smart Manufacturing offers solution to all those challenges.
In a brief, Smart Manufacturing is the integrated manufacturing process reinforced with advanced technologies to meet the dynamic needs of factory, supply network and customers with an ultimate objective of optimizing the complete operations. It is an amalgamation of information technology and manufacturing; a bridge between IT and physical environments composed to increase the flexibility of the manufacturing processes. The system consists of sensors that collect the machine performance data and communicate it to cloud where it is analysed with the help of advanced data analytics platforms and insights from the same are provided to management for factual decision making.
Smart Manufacturing considers all constituents of the manufacturing ecosystem as an integral part of system which were otherwise always left in isolation and paid attention only in case of failures. It enables provision of compete transparency and details about completed and incomplete products, requirement of raw materials, amount of scrap, individual machine efficiency, bottlenecks on particular manufacturing and assembly line, contribution of the scrap from particular machines, total deployed human resources etc. providing tools to increase the efficiency while facilitating the production management. In addition to this, Smart Manufacturing system integrates the data from various components of the value chain and from their respective applications to provide sufficient insights to orchestrate integrated solutions having impact on complete manufacturing ecosystem of vendors, production, supply chain and customers.
Smart Manufacturing can be elucidated with its functional characteristics which are Connectivity, Transparency. Flexibility, Optimization and Pro-activity of the system.
Though there is vast potential of Smart Manufacturing and the insights earned for system can be implemented in numerous ways as per the short-term and long-term objectives of the Organization. Some of the direct benefits of the SM are:
- Improved Operational Efficiency:
With access to real time data of the machines and other various components of the system, it is easier to implement modifications, minimize downtime and reduce costs
- Inventory Management and Optimization
With factual insights about machine performance, finished and unfinished products, production plans etc. management can reduce number of spare and optimize inventory
- Reduced Downtime
Historical data analysed against the real time data collected from sensors can help identify the machine failure patterns and provide insights for predictive maintenance reducing the downtime
- Management Across Value Chain
Integration of the Smart Manufacturing system with post and pre production phases can extend the benefits of Smart Manufacturing beyond the walls of production facility. It can help management by tracking shipments, parts and products all the way to customers to help project the new orders and define production plans accordingly
- Improved Product Quality
With improved communication among the machines and monitoring systems, compliance and standard adhered product quality can be maintained reducing recalls while raising customer satisfaction
Smart Manufacturing will result in controlled production environment and increased efficiencies across all the stages of value chain. It will provide the management with real time production information to granular levels and ability to eliminate bottlenecks, inefficiencies and errors at a much faster rate and competency to take the corrective action at the earliest. With Smart Manufacturing, top brass will have more control over the entire production life cycle and will have dexterity to remotely manage the processes and modify the production plans as per business goals.